The Wolverine
by: Oliver Layco
Wolverine has often been my favorite mutant out of the X-Men universe. The guy has regenerative health and can make adamantium claws come out of his fists. When the first X-Men movie came out I was excited to see him in action and Hugh Jackman didn’t disappoint. While yes, he’s too tall for the listed height of 5’3” it hasn’t bothered me as much as others. Hugh Jackman has consistently delivered a good performance with what he was given. In The Wolverine, he reprises his role as Logan. The main premise is that he saved a Japanese soldier at t
he bombing of Nagasaki and in present day the soldier wants to repay him. Chaos ensues and Logan has to try and keep Mariko (Tao Okamoto) alive. While not difficult to do, this was much better than the previous Wolverine movie. While the story still had its share of “scratch your head” moments, it didn’t frustrate me by the time the credits rolled. With the exception of a few fight scenes, action wise it also felt pretty balanced with nothing too out of the ordinary. I’ve come to terms with it, but I realize I’m never going to see the bloody action movie Wolverine that I look forward to. There’s always that small glimmer of hope in me that they may do it right one day. One other aspect I really liked about it also was the fact that they didn’t force the Japanese people to speak English. Throughout the movie it would go back and forth between the characters speaking Japanese and English. One issue I did have is that some characters felt forced; one example being Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova). This character in particular didn’t seem to serve any purpose besides to have another white person on the cast. However, I don’t see the controversy with the scenes that involved Jean Grey (Famke Jannsen). She was just haunting Logan’s memories and that was that; her screen time probably came up to a few minutes at most. Then in the after credits scene, it was nice to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto. All in all, The Wolverine is a fun movie to enjoy as long as you aren’t expecting anything great out of it.
